Course Plan: In this course we will study functional programming.
In the two previous introductory courses, CS141 and CS142, we studied a
particular type of programming paradigm called imperative or procedural
programming. The functional paradigm differs from the imperative paradigm
in the way one views computation. The imperative style treats computation
as operations performed on state variables whereas the functional style
treats computation as functions operating on values. Benefits of
the functional approach, among others, are the clean and direct approach
to program design without introducing unnecessary side-effects. Typical
well-written functional programs are easier to understand, simpler to debug,
and have a simple proof of correctness. This course will use a language
called Scheme, a dialect of Lisp, as an example of a functional programming
language. Recursion and higher-order functions will play an important role
in our exploration of symbolic computation in functional programming. Other
topics include streams (infinite list structure) and generic procedures.
A final topic of this course will be a discussion of an assembly language
environment (PDP-11) and its implementation in Scheme. A contrast between
interpreted and compiled environments will be discussed.